History

Old Canes is the side project of Appleseed Cast frontman Christopher Crisci.

Old Canes. (n) (1.) Rum. (2.) A Lawrence, Kansas folkish, up tempo, indie rock, acoustic, everyone sits down to play band, headed up by Chris Crisci of The Appleseed Cast and usually joined up with Jordan Geiger, who also fronts his own band Minus Story, and Nathan Jr. who plays in Casket Lottery and joined up as well by other friends, at random.

Old Canes had its start in October of 2001, as a solo act while Chris was recording in England with a friend. As a way to help subsidize the trip, he played a handful of solo acoustic shows. A year and a half later, with some encouragement from friends, Chris decided to pursue Old Canes in earnest. Nathan Jr. soon joined the band to play drums, and Jordan on trumpet / harmonica / banjo / bells / various toy instruments, and percussion.

The music of Old Canes is difficult to describe without sending readers down the wrong path with words like, folk, indie rock, blue grass, up beat, and melancholy. All of which could be words used to describe it. It's not folk music though, or blue grass but it definitely draws tons of influence from those genres. And it is up beat most of the time, but melancholy all at once. Bittersweet. With sometimes punk rock blast and sad lines and lyrics that lament nights of love and drink gone awry. And it's only indie rock in the sense that at it's very core, under the acoustic guitar strummin', banjo pickin', harmonica and what have you, it's as emotive as, and captures the power of the bands Old Canes is made up of.

Ian Stepp remembers visiting his aunt’s house as a kid, where he’d play classic games like Duck Hunt and iterations of the Mario Brothers saga on the family’s trusty old Nintendo Entertainment System.
Now pushing 30, Stepp is still a fan of the now-classic video games that in recent years have spawned a thriving culture and industry capitalizing on the nostalgia of grownups who coveted Nintendo game systems as kids in the 1980s and 90s.